As this has become something of a running feature on my personal blog over the past month, I’ve decided to transpose some of this material over to the website for a greater audience. Keep in mind this was written in a more impersonal style for a smaller group of friends and literati; nonetheless, these may prove of some small interest to the more high minded philosophers and aesthetes among us.

This is, by definition, hardly the last word on the subject, and more or less picks up in the middle – those whose interest may be piqued by the contents herein are well advised to seek out Emanuelle by Emanuelle Arsan, L’Histoire D’O by Pauline Reage, perhaps Venus in Furs by Leopold Sacher-Masoch and, at the very least, the excellent Grove Press reprint of Sade’s Justine (which also contains the important short tale Eugenie de Franval, freely adapted several times by Jesus Franco Manera (aka “Jess Franco”), with the best version being the intimate and extremely decadent Eugenie de Sade (aka Eugenie ’70) with Paul Muller and Soledad Miranda), all of which equal or prove far superior to the majority of the books discussed herein.

So with that being duly noted, let’s begin:

1. La-Bas – Joris-Karl Huysmans
Just finished this excellent and bizarrely contemporary novel by the great J.K. Huysmans.

Another pleasant discovery came to my attention recently: VCI’s release of an eerie frostbitten film from 1971, the Night Visitor.

The poster artwork ballyhoo (a striking Spanish poster for the film is combined with contemporary critical taglines from the more drab if surreal domestic version for the DVD cover) quotes a review which states that “if your flesh doesn’t crawl, it’s on too tight”, but this is patently absurd – there’s nothing remotely frightening about the film. What it does have is a chilling wintry atmosphere and a strong sense of claustrophobia – in spades.

Despite my noted issues with the pricing and degradation of the medium (seriously, major labels selling grey market/home burn DVDs for more than they used to charge for a set of commercially released ones? Where do they get off?), there have been some real gems coming out through some of the MOD lines, with Warner Archives leading the charge by a country mile.

The latest surprising discovery is a 2-fer from the dawn of the talkies: Loose Ankles, paired with The Naughty Flirt.

In this day and age, there are few surprises. We live in a post-cult and underground world, where even what is considered mainstream never fails to acknowledge, crib from, or rip off outright what was once obscuritana, known only to the hip, the scenester, and those who actually produced the films and music under consideration. While the current iterations cannot fail but to be pale imitations of their more creative and vibrant forbears, the knowledge and awareness of what once was hidden in shadows and discussed in secret corners is undisputedly a matter of public discourse, at least among those who create, review, and are themselves part and parcel of the art form.